The Core 2 Quad Q9650 simply doesn't make any sense, it's a wonder that Intel still sells it. The Q9550 can be had for around $220 and is generally slower than the 965 Black Edition. The i5 750 is the wildcard; if it does debut next month at $199 and is as competitive as we're expecting, it could force AMD to compress its upper end pricing.

Until Lynnfield arrives, the only things AMD has to worry about are the Core 2 Quad at the low end and the i7 at the high end. The more expensive Core 2 Quads don't really seem to matter, the Phenom II dispatches with them fairly easily. To fight off the i7, instead of lowering profit margins, AMD is going to be offering a number of bundles to help reduce total ownership cost.

While AMD wasn’t specific as to what bundles will be available, starting today Newegg, Tiger Direct, ZipZoomFly, NCIX and MWAVE will all be offering bundles on the Phenom II X4 965 and certain motherboards. AMD is estimating the bundles to knock off around $40 from the total combined price. There will also be Corsair memory and AMD GPU bundles, but AMD was even more vague on what we should expect there.

A quick look at Newegg shows that currently you can save about $30 if you’re buying a Phenom II X4 945 and a Gigabyte 790FX motherboard. Unfortunately it looks like the bundles don’t kick in if you’re buying any of the cheaper motherboards. It remains to be seen what sort of 965 bundles will be available.

Pressure from above with the i7 920 is relieved by lower prices, but next month pressure from below with the i5 750 is sure to make things difficult. AMD sweetens the pot by making its flagship part a multiplier unlocked Black Edition. Like the 955 before it, our 965 easily hit 3.8GHz without so much as an added millivolt. We just increased the clock multiplier and off we went.

58 Comments

A really fast CPU, some minor tweaks to the K10 architecture and AMD stays "current", but the TDP's are ridiculous, 140W!!, for non existing gods sake! at 95W TDP and at the same price they would be excellent purchases to Intels Lynnfields. Clearly they are positioned at gamers,a crowd long lost to AMD. For uses other than happy jerking at intel compiler optimized benchmarks and moronic SuperPi's with analyzing miniscule FPS differences at games, the AMD Phenom II 905E at 65W TDP is an excellent buy. Something about the 45nm SOI manufacturing of this chips from AMD makes us wonder... Reply

It's not like the 140W TDP happened by accident or took AMD by surprise. 120 - 140W has been the target TDP for high-end CPUs for a long time. At this targeted TDP, AMD found a 3.4 GHz chip could be produced with decent yields. Some thought, research and design goes into the launch of a new CPU even if it's just a 200 MHz clockspeed bump.

Don't worry, we'll not see a 160W or 180W CPU any time soon since 140W is a sensible target. Modern heatpipe coolers, mobos and PSUs have no trouble with them.

If you think the difference between a 65W and a 140W CPU is too much, you must live in a very dark house or apartment since each light bulb consumes almost that entire difference. Reply

"The 800 series Phenom II X4 is gone, as are the DDR2-only Phenom II X4 940 and 920. Most of the 700 series is also done with."

I can understand AMD ending the 800 series and the AM2+ only Phenom IIs. But is this statement saying that AMD won't upgrade their X3 720 to a faster triple core, despite better yields? Many people have said that the 720 is AMD's best bang-for-the-buck value. I'd think that AMD would update this segment also. Reply